I wait, sense no response, call again, using full power. I sweep the enclosing volume of rock with an emergency alert warning. I tune to the all-units band, await the replies of my comrades of the Brigade. None answer. Now I must face the reality: I alone have survived the assault.

I channel my remaining power to my drive and detect a channel of reduced density. I press for it and the broken rock around me yields reluctantly. Slowly, I move forward and upward. My pain circuitry shocks my awareness center with emergency signals; I am doing irreparable damage to my overloaded neural systems, but my duty is clear: I must seek out and engage the Enemy.

2

Emerging from behind the blast barrier, Chief Engineer Pete Reynolds of the New Devonshire Port Authority pulled off his rock mask and spat grit from his mouth.

“That’s the last one; we’ve bottomed out at just over two hundred yards. Must have hit a hard stratum down there.”

“It’s almost sundown,” the paunchy man beside him said shortly. “You’re a day and a half behind schedule.”

“We’ll start backfilling now, Mr. Mayor. I’ll have pilings poured by oh-nine hundred tomorrow, and with any luck the first section of pad will be in place in time for the rally.”

“I’m—” The mayor broke off, looked startled. “I thought you told me that was the last charge to be fired.…”

Reynolds frowned. A small but distinct tremor had shaken the ground underfoot. A few feet away, a small pebble balanced atop another toppled and fell with a faint clatter.

“Probably a big rock fragment falling,” he said. At that moment, a second vibration shook the earth, stronger this time. Reynolds heard a rumble and a distant impact as rock fell from the side of the newly blasted excavation. He whirled to the control shed as the door swung back and Second Engineer Mayfield appeared.

“Take a look at this, Pete!”

Reynolds went across to the hut, stepped inside. Mayfield was bending over the profiling table.

“What do you make of it?” he pointed. Superimposed on the heavy red contour representing the detonation of the shaped charge that had completed the drilling of the final pile core were two other traces, weak but distinct.

“About 0.1 intensity.” Mayfield looked puzzled. “What—”

The tracking needle dipped suddenly, swept up the screen to peak at 0.21, dropped back. The hut trembled. A stylus fell from the edge of the table. The red face of Mayor Dougherty burst through the door.

“Reynolds, have you lost your mind? What’s the idea of blasting while I’m standing out in the open? I might have been killed!”

“I’m not blasting,” Reynolds snapped. “Jim, get Eaton on the line, see if they know anything.” He stepped to the door, shouted. A heavyset man in sweat-darkened coveralls swung down from the seat of a cable-lift rig.